A tabletop RPG about callous survivors scavenging the abyssal guts of the world-eating Beast that consumed their home.

You are a scavenger. Driven by the primal instinct to survive, you venture into the depths of the Evergut in search of some remnant of the past that will postpone your inevitable digestion.

The land was resplendent once; sprawling forests, massive ranges, glittering coastlines. Hundreds of clans, nations, and empires carved their homes from mountain and glen - living and killing and loving beneath the sun-kissed boughs.

But that was a lifetime ago. For generations the survivors have known nothing but sorrow. The Hungry God consumed all, leaving the world as little more than a skinned carcass moaning to be put out of its misery. Millions were swallowed during the Great Devourer's gluttonous feast; and yet, humanity pressed on.

Belly of the Beast is a tabletop roleplaying game focusing on scavengers: brazen survivors that plumb the depths of a world-eating monster's guts, scouring the remains of the mighty Empires that were eaten by the Beast.

Book Specs

The physical book is available in standard quality softcover, and premium quality hardcover. If you just want to hold the thing in your hand, I suggest the softcover. It is cheaper and the quality is still pretty good. If you want to have it as a bookshelf / coffee table piece, the hardcover is the way to go.

Both are 6x9" in size, and just shy of 250 pages. The PDF is heavily bookmarked for easy reference.

System

The core mechanic uses the well-tested Ethos Engine (Vow of Honor, Hunt the Wicked). It is a d6 dice pool in which you gain and spend dice toward your Instincts (Greed, Violence, etc), and roll against the most relevant Skill's rank. The more successes you roll out of your d6 pool, the better your outcome.

The game is certainly task-resolution oriented, and focuses on grim and gritty people and their personal stories, rather than epic or high fantasy. You can check out the quick start rules for a glimpse into how it works.

Setting

Take the trappings of a late-medieval Byzantine Empire and throw it through a blender. The Beast is a monster the size of a mountain range, and it has happily gobbled up all of the world's surface -- including its cities, people, and artifacts. You're one of the survivors, either recently swallowed in the Beast's inexorable buffet, or you were born there in the last 60 years, eeking out a living within the cavernous innards of the Evergut.

So here is just a comment I would like to make, if you are buying this book and hoping for a lot of artwork I am going to pop your bubble and just tell you that there isn't much. Most of the time there is only artwork at the beginning of each chapter and very rarely in between. Personally I think it would have been interest to have seen some artwork of the parasites within the beast or even more images of various characters.

However, if you are just looking for a unique game setting this isn't too bad. I found it to be rather interesting.

Robbie GJune 21, 2017 1:31 am UTC

PURCHASER

Hello, so I have been contemplating whither or not I should buy this game and if I do if I should buy it just as a PDF or if I should try to buy a hard copy to help motivate others to play this with me.

Can anyone who has actually purchased this game answer some of these questions. Is this game fun to play? Would it be worth getting a hard copy? What were your experiences with the game?

Thank you for reading this, I hope to hear a comment back soon.

Matthew ROctober 18, 2016 4:25 am UTC

Why do so many RPG publishers think that the first few pages of a product make for a good preview? Case in point: the preview of this game consists of
- 1 title page
- 1 blank page
- 1 nearly-blank credits page
- 1 brief and mostly generic table of contents
- 1 very nice full-page artwork
- 1 half-page introduction that doesn't tell me much that wasn't already covered by the product description.

Here's a hint: The purpose of a preview is to give customers more information about the game, and hopefully make them want to buy it. Yours does neither. I'm not saying this to be mean, but in the spirit of constructive criticism; I think you've come up with a cool idea, and I'd like to know more about the game, but the preview you posted is useless for that purpose. Do yourself a favor and replace it with a better preview, one that actually sells your product (and while you're at it, fix the aspect ratio on the cover image).

Ben DOctober 18, 2016 12:45 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Hey Matthew!

Good point, and one that I should have taken a look at sooner. I haven't really "gone public" with the game yet, as I'm just trying to get my Kickstarter backers all squared away. I've adjusted the page preview to include some more of the game itself (the first 12 pages essentially), but I might go through and specify a chunk that is a better overview of the game.

The cover image's aspect ratio is correct and the same as all of my other games, we're just having some kind of technical glitch on the product page. I've already reached out to DT's publisher support and hopefully they can fix it quickly. Thanks again for the feedback.

Matthew ROctober 18, 2016 5:05 pm UTC

The new preview is an improvement; if I were you, though, I'd skip the first couple of pages and start with the table of contents.

Ben DOctober 18, 2016 8:42 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Give it a look now and let me know!

Matthew ROctober 18, 2016 10:13 pm UTC

Definitely better. I'd still encourage you to tweak it a little bit when you have time, to give an idea of what character creation looks like and maybe drop some of the "How to play an RPG" stuff (and don't worry if it means skipping pages), but it's decent as-is. Thanks for being so open to advice!

Ben DOctober 18, 2016 10:55 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Part of the limitation is that we're only allowed to choose pages between 1 and 20 on DT's platform. So, this is the best I can do using their preview tool. In the coming days I plan on releasing and linking the quick start as a standalone, free product.

October 19, 2016 3:39 pm UTC

PURCHASER

You can create pdf previews and upload them (I have done it before, taking a multitude of pages across a product and splicing it together to make a pdf preview.

A neuronphaser.com review. Belly of the Beast is a roleplaying game with a terrifyingly unique premise: the players are scavengers living in the guts of a giant, world-eating monster. The entire game is laser-focused on hardy, grim survivors col [...]

This is excellent. I love the system (the dice engine is fairly standard, but the way characters are built is awesome), I love the setting, and I love how much freedom there is as far as what the world looks like. [...]

I absolutely love the artwork in this book, and that combined with the unique setting is why I backed the project when it was on Kickstarter. I'm planning to take the Belly of the Beast setting, and use it with another RPG rule set that my group loves. [...]

The minute I saw Belly of the Beast proposed on Kickstarter, I knew I had to have it. I was immediately struck by the originality of the setting, one so rich and interesting and filled with the potential for original roleplaying situations, I wished th [...]

This is an awesome game, I've only had time to run it once but everyone seemed to enjoy it. The concept is good, the system is easy to get your head around and easy to run with. It would be perfect for a one shot or a whole campaign of fighting through [...]

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